The temptation in the aftermath of America’s latest horrific assault weapon mass murder is to simply throw up one’s hands and/or duck for cover. With yet another 26 men, women and children lying dead this morning at the hands of deranged man wielding one of the tens of thousands of assault weapons that infest our nation like poisonous man-made rats, the lure of giving into hopelessness is strong.

Add to this, the cowardly fecklessness of so many of our elected leaders in the face of the nation’s insatiable death cartel — the weapons industry and the NRA — and the pull of the fetal position, both literally and figuratively, collectively and individually, is powerful.

And yet, we simply can’t give in. Tempting as it is, caring and thinking people cannot give into those who would spread fear and killing machines into every nook and cranny of our society and make them a permanent fixture on the national landscape. We simply can’t live this way.

Happily, we don’t have to. The good news in all of this — and, admittedly, it’s hard to see this morning through the smoke and blood and tears — is that we are not condemned forever to the bleak reality that the killing machine worshipers would impose upon us.

Truth be told, we have the power to resist them. We are the majority. Public opinion is already overwhelmingly in favor of sane gun laws. What’s more, the demographic trends point in our direction as the nation becomes an evermore diverse and urbanized society. For a growing percentage of Americans, assault weapons are not something to be worshiped like holy icons; they are, like toxic poisons and child predators, dangerous enemies of freedom that must be controlled.

And so, as bleak as things seem this morning, the truth of the matter is that there is hope. As the death toll from mass gun murders mounts, so too does the resolve of millions of citizens across the United States who are organizing and mobilizing to take their country back from the domestic terrorists who threaten our domestic tranquility.

It’s happened before in societies all across the world and throughout history that people of good will have banded together to say “no” to violence and killing and “yes” to peace and freedom.